jerry brown

Earthjustice has challenged the Department of Transportation’s denial of a petition by Sierra Club and Forest Ethics to ban the transportation of Bakken crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars.

“Most of the explosive crude oil on U.S. rails is moving in tanker cars that are almost guaranteed to fail in an accident,” explained Patti Goldman of Earthjustice.

“The risks are too great to keep shipping explosive Bakken crude in defective DOT-111s. The National Transportation Safety Board called them unsafe two decades ago, and by the Department of Transportation’s own estimates, the U.S. could see 15 rail accidents every year involving these cars until we get them off the tracks.”

At the same time Earthjustice was bringing this challenge, the Canadian government was announcing that it will ban 3,000 of the riskiest DOT-111s from carrying materials like Bakken crude.

Alarmed by California’s intensifying wildfires and withering drought, Governor Jerry Brown has lashed out at Republicans and other politicians who continue to deny that destructive climate change is already occurring.

In a series of recent comments, Brown also said California is at “the epicenter of climate change” and urged other states and nations to work to halt the rising temperatures that are threatening the future of humankind.

“We live in a world that is not just government or not just business, it’s natural, the natural systems. And as we send billions and billions of tons of heat-trapping gases, we get heat and we get fires and we get what we’re seeing,” Brown was quoted as saying on ABC News.

“So we’ve got to gear up. We’re going to deal with nature as best we can, but humanity is on a collision course with nature and we’re just going to have to adapt to it in the best way we can.”

Brown added he believes California is taking steps to reduce greenhouse gases in a way that exceeds any other state in the nation.

A Democrat, Brown said it is difficult to create a consensus to act on climate change when Republicans deny global warming exists and that humans are largely responsible for temperature increases in the atmosphere.

“That’s a challenge. It is true that there’s virtually no Republican who accepts the science that virtually is unanimous. I mean there is no scientific question. There’s just political denial for various reasons, best known to those people who are in denial.

“Whatever the thoughts of the Republicans, we here in California are on the front lines. We’ve got to deal with it. We’ve already appropriated $600 million. We have 5,000 firefighters. We’re going to need thousands more. And in the years to come, we’re going to have to make very expensive investments and adjust. And the people are going to have to be careful of how they live, how they build their homes and what kind of vegetation is allowed to grow around them.”

Since the shale rush took off starting in 2005 in Texas, drillers have sprinted from one state to the next, chasing the promise of cheaper, easier, more productive wells. This land rush was fueled by a wild spike in natural gas prices that helped make shale gas drilling attractive even though the costs of fracking were high.

As the selling price of natural gas sank from its historic highs in 2008, much of the luster wore off entire regions that had initially captivated investors, like Louisiana’s Haynesville shale or Arkansas’s Fayetteville, now in decline.

But unlike natural gas prices, oil prices remain high to this day, and investors and policymakers alike remain dazzled by the heady promise of oil from shale rock. Oil and gas companies have wrung significant amounts of black gold from shale oil plays like Texas’s Eagle Ford and North Dakota’s Bakken.

Shale oil, they say, is the next big thing.

“After years of talking about it, we’re finally poised to control our own energy future,” President Obama said in his most recent State of the Union address. “We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years.”

But once again, the reality may be nothing like the hype. Consider California.

California has become the newest battleground state in the fracking fight that is already being waged in states like Pennsylvania and New York. Why?

The short answer is the Monterey Shale. It’s a massive oil deposit that is trapped in the shale formations underneath Los Angeles and most of California’s Central Coast and Central Valley regions (as well as all of the sources of drinking water for the people living in those regions). It was considered too difficult to reach to be worth it until fracking technology came along.

The rush to exploit the Monterey Shale’s reserves has spurred three bills moving through the California state legislature that would halt all fracking in the Golden State until its impacts can be studied more fully, not unlike what has happened in New York and New Jersey. Unlike New Jersey’s ban, which expired in January, the California legislation would require further legislative action to lift. It also stipulates that fracking cannot be done close to valuable water sources, and that all chemicals used in the process must be disclosed.

Environmentalists oppose fracking because of the many dangers, known and unknown, that it poses to the environment and human health. Contamination of water supplies is the major concern, as is the amount of fresh water required by fracking operations, and the fact that injecting water and chemicals to fracture the ground is maybe not a great idea in earthquake-prone California.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.